Blizzard needs to discard the outdated mentality of locking decent gear behind raids, it is archaic and hurts many people, especially casuals who would have a reason to keep playing long term instead of having nothing to do because they cant progress their character’s gear past a certain point without being involved in group content.
They seemed to have realized this, with how slow covenant progression is, covenant bonus sets and WQ ilvl increases existing around renown levels they are trying to give casuals their very own form of gear progression, but that is a problem because they are trying to separate ultra casual progression from “hardcore” progression aka anyone who does any form of higher end group content and for anyone doing higher end group content that casual progression is dead because we outgear all these rewards in the first few weeks.
The ilvl of the covenant set is trash, so is world quests, anyone who actually is going to be raiding and m+ instantly has better gear than anything all those sources can give, the same thing can be seen in pvp where Blizzard refuses to give decent gear and has chosen to make the very slow to upgrade honor set be below LFR ilvl meaning the gear is worthless and you can get better by just doing m+ or lfr/normal.
There is absolutely no reason to separate gear progression between casuals and hardcores, the only rule you need is “The easier it is, the longer it takes to get max rewards” so mythic raiding will always be the fastest way to get mythic ilvl gear but not the only one.
Instead of trying to create 2 forms of progression (which btw ignores all other forms of players because many do multiple things in the game like me, it isnt just “ultra casuals that only do wqs” or “high end hardcore raiders”, I do high end group content and also casual solo content but only 1 is actually rewarding) give us a universal gearing system, a system where everyone can slowly progress to the max ilvl through their own preferred content, let them do torghast all day if they want but give them a reward that progresses their character’s POWER.
Gear needs to be distributed to everyone willing to spend time and effort, imagine if that lower end progression existed, many casuals would actually have a reason to keep playing wow for months and keep improving the characters slowly through the activities of their choice, doing content wouldnt feel like wasting time because it doesnt offer any power rewards, they would have a goal that would take a long time but they would know they could achieve.
As it stands ultra casuals can only progress their character’s power for so long before running into a wall of “do high end group content or your progression is over”
Casuals like me who do everything have little reason to do any casual content that doesnt reward me with power so that entire area of the game becomes dead and irrelevant and so is for hardcore people who end up only logging in to raid and nothing else because nothing actually rewards them for doing anything other than raiding. Though sadly some love this “Overwatch with raids” playstyle.
Now if gear progression was universal, not only would casuals have a reason to spend time in the game after the first few months, I would also have a reason to do world content and more casual activities because my time wouldnt be wasted since it would help with the progression of my character’s power.
And before the tryhards start screaming “others dont deserve good gear if they dont do mythic, they dont need it” let me continue the implication of that sentence, the implication that goes “You dont deserve good gear because I deserve it more and should always be above you because I mythic raid” which screams a very toxic and unhealthy desire to keep people down instead of lifting them up, this fear that “others might be equal” is completely psychological and unhealthy.
